The Legislative Council of Jamaica seems liable to attacks of
morbid conscientiousness. The negroes send up so many petitions for the disestablishment of the Church, and so much time is lost in reading them, that a tax of 10s. on each petition has been officially proposed as a means at once of raising revenue and check- ing a nuisance. The House of Commons adopts a much simpler plan. It never reads the petitions at all, but sends them in bushels to a clerk, who counts the names, and records the prayers, and embalms them all in a "return," which, again, nobody ever looks at. The Government of India suffers from a grievance of the same kind, petitions arriving in bales upon all manner of sub- jects and in all kinds of tongues. These are all read, and, we believe, a request was really made by the great Orientalist Dr. Sprenger, who had to read many of them, for increased allowances, on the ground that the multitude of petitions from lunatics took up half his time. Half the mad folk in India have some grievance, which they think the "Lord Sahib" could remedy if he would.
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